RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Christologv
m God which preexisted in him from eternity, and became incarnate by taking flesh, and occupying the place of the soul. No incar-j 6. Goodwin nation is possible without a humani-l and Crosby, zation of the divine; and this implies;
a self-limitation, and true development from ignorance to knowledge and wisdom.; The incarnation is not a synthesis or union of opposite natures, but a development of the divine in the form of the human. The Word did not assume flesh or human nature, but it became flesh. As the true idea of God includes humanity, so the true idea of man includes God. The divine andi human differ only as the ideal differs from the ac-f tual, or the prototype from the copy. This essential unity is the basis of the possibility of the incarnation as a Kenosis. Howard Crosby held that, according to the Scripture, the Son of God reduced himself to the dimensions of humanity, to a state of " dormancy." His Godhead, therefore, was in a state of quiescence during his humiliation and awoke with the resurrection, after which the divine overshadowed the human.
A theory advocated by so many learned and pious theologians can not be altogether false. The Kenotic theory has the merit of bringing out the truth of the classical passage in Phil. ii. more .forcibly than ever before. But it carries the idea of the self-limitation of the Logos to 7. Criti- the extent of a metaphysical impos-j cism. sibility: it contradicts the essential; unchangeableness of God. The humiliation of the Logos is an abandonment of the divine doxa and its enjoyment, but not of the divine being. The true Kenosis is a renunciation of the use (chresis), but not of the possession (ktesis), of divine attributes. The former is possible, the latter impossible. God can do nothing that is contrary to his rational and moral nature. It is admitted by the Kenoticists that the Logos can not, in the incarnation, limit or suspend his moral ' ' attributes of love and holiness, but reveals them most fully in the state of humiliation. But his metaphysical and intellectual attributes belong just as much to the essence and nature of God as his moral attributes, and all are inseparable from his nature; so that God can not give up any! of his attributes without mutilating and so fa/ destroying his own being. He can not commit suicide, nor can he go to sleep. He can not reduce himself to the unconscious existence of an embryo, without ceasing to be God, and without destroying the life of the world, which without him can not exist a single moment. The illustration borrowed from sleep proves nothing; for man's identity continues undisturbed in sleep, and he awakes with the full exercise of all the faculties. Moreover, we can not conceive of such a self-reduction of the Logos without suspending the intertrinitarian process, and also the Trinity of revelation. It would stop for thirty-three years, as Gess frankly admits, the eternal generation of the Son, the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, and the government of the world through the Logos. To say that the Logos remained unchanged in the Trinity, while
at the same time he went out of the Trinity and became man, is virtually to establish two distinct Logoi, which is no better than the orthodox theory of two parallel natures, one infinite, the other finite. The Father and the Son have but one essence; how, then, could the divinity of the Son be suspended, or almost annihilated for a time, without suspending the disunity of the Father ? It may be said, with Thomas Aquinas, that it was not the nature, but the person, of the Logos that became man. True, but a person without a nature is an impossible abstraction. If the Logos surrendered his divine self-consciousness, his omnipotence, and omniscience, how did he regain them ? Was it by a recollection of his preexistent state ? Or by a reflection on the Old Testament Scriptures? Or by a revelation from the Father? Or by the development of a native instinct? These and similar questions can not be satisfactorily answered by the consistent Kenoticists. Professor Paine (Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism, Boston, 1900, p. 281) pronounces the? Kenosis theory " only a metaphysical makeshift; to cover the real contradiction which in the Chalce-' donian theology stands visible to every intelligent eye."
5; The Eitsohlian Theory is the product of Albrecht Ritschl (q.v.), the founder of the theological school which goes by his name. It is set forth adequately in his Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und der Versdhnung (3 vols., Bonn, 1870-74; 3d ed., 1888-89; Eng. transl., Edinburgh, vol. i., 1872, vol. iii., 1900), chap, vi., " The Doctrine of Christ's Person and Work " (iii. 385-484 of Eng.ed.). The theory is an appreciation of Christ's ethical and religious unity with the Father and a denial of man's ability to find out the " physical origin" of the Person of Christ. Christ is " unique in his own order," that is, regarded as the revealer and bearer of religious and ethical truth. In this sense he is the Son of God; and his " apprehension of himself as the Son of God is ever attained through his adoration of God as his Father." It is folly to attempt to explain the physical origin of the Person of Christ. Ritschl's theory is in accord with his discarding of the 1. The metaphysical element and his asser- Theory tion only of that which is truly re- Stated, ligious. In other words, all is to be set aside from the discussion of Christ's Person which can not be and has not been tested by the Church, or " the Christian community," in its experience. Ritschl says that the three offices of Christ — prophet, priest, and king — are a step toward grasping the significance of Christ for the Church, but they afford only a defective conception of him. Jesus was conscious of a new^ and previously unknown relation to God, as he testified to his disciples (p. 386). He esteemed himself more than a mere human being. He regarded his life as an instrument of God's complete revelation of himself. The theology of the Reformers adopted, it is true, the ethical mode of looking at Christ (p. 440); but all the older theologies in their doctrine of Christ failed to consider his religious activities, namely his habit of prayer and
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